This Week in Geek (1-07/02/10)

Buys

It's a very Whovian week! Not only did I get the last remaining specials on DVD - The Waters of Mars and The End of TIme - but also Cubicle 7's gorgeous GameMaster's Screen for the new AITAS game.I believe this will now be the standard against which all GM Screens will be judged. Yes, my preferred format is 3 panels, and this is 4, but they're all useful to the game. What separates this Screen from others is how sturdy it is. Each panel is the thickness of a children's book's cover. It won't fall down anytime soon. I simulated the wind that comes through my window and the mischievous actions of my cat on it, and it stayed put. I might even use it for other games, sticking photocopies of the proper tables over the AITAS panels.

"Accomplishments"

DVDs: Cross Roman Holiday with Enter the Dragon and take away the scrip, and you get Way of the Dragon (AKA Return of the Dragon for those who've seen Enter the Dragon before this one). This weekend, we were all stuck in a high school improv tournament, and all the volunteers crashed at my house for Kung Fu Fridays (plus a couple more people). Knowing it would be rowdy this week, I chose a bad film, one no one could ruin because its makers had already done the job. And that means Bruce Lee. Greatest martial artist ever, and yet his movies are terrible exploitation. We've got gratuitous nudity. We've got gay stereotypes. We've got the BGs and Village People as "street toughs". We've got a couple days worth of shooting in Rome. Bizarre scenes of Bruce stealing ice cream and eating 5 soups at the same time. A stray cat getting as much camera time as Chuck Norris and Bruce in the clinax. So lots of laughs, which is all I wanted out of it. The DVD has a small complement of photos, trailers and about 6 minutes of interviews with Asian stars about Bruce, but not about Way of the Dragon. What, couldn't dig up Chuck Norris for this one?

Big Finish Doctor Who audios: This week, I listened to Singularity written by James Swallow and featuring the 5th Doctor and for the first time since Loups-Garoux, Turlough. The TARDIS lands in Moscow where there's a temporal anomaly - humans from the end of time are downloading themselves into people in an attempt to escape entropy. It's a bit like Last of the Time Lords, actually! Bit of a shouty climax I found hard to understand in parts, but otherwise a strong story for Turlough.

Neglected Post of the WeekHere's a mini-comic I republished on the blog during Crisis on Infinite Earths Week: Dada #4, originally published in 1996. Ethan Hunt's mission, if he chooses to accept it, is to cover it in comments.